Monday, February 29, 2016

William J. “Bill” Federer is the host of the program Faith
in History on the TCT Network the radio show The American Minute, affiliated
with the World Congress of Families,
president of Amerisearch (“a publishing company dedicated to researching
America’s noble heritage”), as well as an author of several books with titles
like America’s God and Country
Encyclopedia of Quotations, The Ten
Commandments and Their Influence on American Law, Three Secular Reasons Why America Should Be Under God and What Every American Needs to Know About the
Quran: A History of Islam and the United States. Federer is, in other
words, one of the central promoters of the idea of The United States As a Christian Nation,
and that Christians are currently being persecuted (tax exemption rules for churches are like Nazi Germany,
for instance). Like David Barton,
Federer is also a pseudo-historian (he has a degree in accounting), and though he hasn’t achieved quite the fame
of Barton, he is known for sharing Barton’s aptitude for facts, accuracy, honesty,
accountability and general reasoning skills. He is also a conspiracy theorist,
signatory to the Manhattan Declaration and madman.

So, for instance, Federer thinks that the “atheist homosexual gay agenda movement” will move America “into an Islamic
future” complete with mythical Sharia law “no-go zones”.
And the conspiracy is governed from the very top. Federer thinks that the Arab Spring was designed by evil forces who wanted to create a surge in Muslim refugees who would then
settle in the U.S. in order to establish Islamic “sleeper cells.” These cells
will then soon “get a signal to have Ferguson riots in malls across America,”
thereby giving Obama the justification to “restore order” by setting up a
“militarized dictatorship.” And then, Federer warns, Obama could follow in the
footsteps of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot and kill millions of
Christians. (As his source, Federer cited Avi Lipkin – we’ll cover him in due course – who heard from his wife, who heard from an
unspecified Arabic-language broadcast). He has previously worried that atheists
would kill millions of Christians if they could take over the military;
in other words, people he disagree with on theological and/or political issues
– libruls, atheists, Muslims, gays and the American government – are secretly
working together, and their goal is to kill him, which tells you quite a bit
about the mindset of people like Bill Federer. How is it supposed to work?
Well, according to Federer,
Europe “went from a Judeo-Christian past into a neutral-secular-gay-agenda
present and now it’s going into an Islamic future;” hence, it is clear that
“the sexual confusion agenda is simply a transition phase” that will soon “be
taken over by Islam.” The process by which LGBT equality is leading to Islamic
dominion is already in full effect in the military, where Christians have been
forced into the closet by the fact that gays are allowed to serve, and
proselytizing classes on Islam (he may be referring to classes on Islamic
culture for soldiers who are going to be stationed in Muslim countries and who
are expected to interact with the civilian population) are already winning
numerous converts.

While evidence for such a conspiracy does not exist, Federer
sees it everywhere. For instance, the 2006 scandal involving Ted Haggard was timed to help Democrats retake Congress,
and the subprime mortgage crisis was orchestrated to stop the momentum the
McCain campaign had gained by choosing Sarah Palin as its running mate. And
predictably, Federer thinks that Benghazi was all part of a plan hatched by Obama and Hillary Clinton to spread
Sharia law around the world. It is also all about Saul Alinsky, of course. In
particular, Clinton was “using Alinsky tactics” in her response to the attack
to engender a “hurried rush for Americans to give up their free speech rights”
and to impose Sharia law: “So the question is was Benghazi just inept actions
by our government, was it something to put down negative speech that could
affect the President’s reelection campaign or was it an Alinsky tactic to push
an agenda to forbid free speech insulting Islam,” asked Federer,
but it wasn’t really a question: “We’re talking about a global goal of
establishing Sharia law and we came very, very close to it happening right
after the Benghazi attempt with this effort to forbid free speech insulting
Islam.” He didn’t give any details on the latter claim. Before the 2012
election, Federer also speculated (and promptly took to be established) that the Obama administration would
intentionally bring about war between Iran and Israel which Obama could use as
a pretext to take control of the radio, TV and internet … or he might fake a
plot on his life that can be blamed on the Tea Party in the manner of Stalin.

As is to be expected, Federer is a creationist, and has
criticized the theory of evolution for Darwin’s alleged racist motivations,
which would be irrelevant to the validity of the theory even if the
speculations were true, which they aren’t.
But according to Federer,
“Darwin is best known for the theory of evolution, arguing that all men are not
equal because some are more evolved,” an assertion that has nothing to do with
anything remotely connected to evolution – though to Federer, the idea that
some humans are more evolved than others “influenced the Dred Scott Case,”
which took place three years before the publication of The Origin of Species and fifteen years before The Descent of Man. Here is Federer on the Scopes trial. It’s … a pretty feeble smearing attempt, even
for a wingnut hack.

Federer has appeared in numerous conspiracy documentaries,
like Truth that Transforms,
which was released to coincide with the Titanic anniversary and set out to expose
the “iceberg” or the “radical homosexual agenda”.

Diagnosis: A poor man’s David Barton; a hack with little or
no aptitude for reason, honesty, accuracy or facts. Even so, he has managed to
become an influential voice among certain rightwing groups, which tells you a
bit about those groups. Dangerous.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Randy Featherstone is the manager of KBJS-FM, an affiliate
radio station of the Moody Network in East Texas – not a particularly major
player, to be sure, but notable for the fact that they, in 2011, canceled David Barton’s Wallbuilders Live radio program. … as any sane manager of a radio station would do, of
course. But Featherstone is not sane, and his problem with Barton was not
Barton’s dishonesty,
pseudo-history,
delusional religious fundamentalism,
fanatic denialism or bigotry.
Rather, Featherstone had a problem with Barton’s sympathetic attitude toward
Glenn Beck.
“Hey, but that still sounds reasonable,” you might say. Well, yes, but
Featherstone’s problem was not that Beck is an idiot, but that Beck is … a Mormon.
And Barton, by exhibiting sympathy for Beck, also exhibited a “failure to
distinguish between Mormon theology and Christianity.” That is, “when David
Barton said it doesn’t matter whether you are a Mormon or a Baptist or a
Methodist, we felt we had to do something,” said Featherstone.

Diagnosis:
We admit that we don’t know much else about Featherstone and his view of the
world. We probably don’t want to know either.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Not much by way of notability, perhaps, but this one is both
trite and disconcerting at the same time. Jeff Fears is apparently “head of the
science department at Salisbury Christian School,” a hardcore creationist, uh,
institution. Fears himself believes that “sound science requires no belief in evolution,” but has, it seems, not the
faintest idea what either “sound science” or “evolution” actually means.
Instead, he pushes a (familiar) bogus distinction between observational science (i.e. book keeping and logistics) and historical
science, which requires interpretation
in light of … well, faith. The point that all
good scientific theories and hypotheses concern unobserved phenomena, but that
you obtain evidence for or against them by deriving predictions about
observable phenomena and testing the hypotheses about things that are
observable now, is pretty far from
Fears’s … “understanding” of science.

But he isn’t done. Fears also laments the perceived
prevalence of methodoligcal naturalism – which creationists (and others) have
deluded themselves into falsely thinking that modern science is committed to –
and points out that, as opposed to modern evolutionists, the “founding fathers
of modern science – giants like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton –
interpreted evidence from a decidedly Judeo-Christian worldview and made what
are arguably the most significant scientific discoveries the world has ever
known, precisely from that vantage point. They were demonstrably not
naturalists.” Well, he isn’t even close to getting any of this, is he?

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Elect a New Congress is a wingnut super PAC devoted to
“restoring liberty” in Congress, with “liberty” understood in a somewhat
idiosyncratic way, it seems. It’s founder, Bill Fawell (not “Falwell” – some
people apparently miss that), wants to free us not only from the left, but from
the Illuminati.
And the Illuminati are everywhere. As evidence of their influence, Fawell can
point to Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime show in 2012, where the singer wore an
Egyptian headdress and was surrounded by male dancers who formed a pyramid – a
well-known part of secret Illuminati symbolism. But he feared Beyonce’s
halftime show in 2013 would be worse:

“If you look at some
of Beyonce’s performances … it’s like the military industrial police state,”said Fawell,
who also pointed out that she has previously performed surrounded by male dancers in protective helmets:
“That’s the subliminal message that will
be spreading worldwide because everyone watches the Super Bowl.” (Methinks
he overestimates the worldwide popularity of American football, but I don’t
think that’s the weakest premise in his reasoning.)

Forecast
Wheel, a prophetic roulette that rolls out fortunes that are as sophisticated
and profound as an average fortune cookie, such as “your financial and social
status will improve when you marry;”

Meaning
of House Numbers, which will apparently give you a house’s prime selling or
purchasing price; and

Cosmic
Mates, which at $3.99 will teach you the “secrets of your personality and
destiny” – it’s basically an electronic version of the paper fortunetellers you
may or may not have made as a kid, no joke.

Other than that, she has apparently
written a book, Motivational Numerology
and How Numbers Affect Your Life, which appears to contain a delightful
combination of New Age religious fanaticism and corporate newspeak. At least
she sums herself up pretty well: “I call myself the Dr. Phil of numerology
because I’m so incredibly honest and forthright,” says Faubion.

Diagnosis: Ok, the Dr. Phil
comparison might indicate a certain awareness of the level of bullshit she
peddles, but we suspect that she is as hilariously and jaw-droppingly oblivious
as it demonstrates if taken at face value.